The Fancy (2 page)

He left his sack in the kitchen before he opened the living-room door. There they all were, with the green baize cloth on the table. Connie, her father in his thick pepper-and-salt suit, Mrs. Munroe with her salt cellars conspicuous in the V neck of the jigsaw patterned dress she had had for Dorothy’s wedding, Dorothy herself, in the same condition as Queenie, but frog-like and coarsened where Queenie was soft and limpid-eyed, and Dorothy’s husband, Don Derris, who used to be in Wireless, but was now in charge of a barrage balloon, conveniently near home.

“Hullo all,” said Edward casually.

Mr. Munroe raised his empty, pear-shaped face. “Ah,” he began in his quoting voice, “the return of the wanderer. Well, my son, and how’s——”

“You’re late, Ted,” said Connie, playing a card briskly. Her mother clapped another on top of it. “Nice to see you, Ted,” she said with her eyes on the game.

“Hiya,” said Don. “Ace of hearts, me dear old souls. Looks like little Don’s going to clean up again.” The wireless was playing unheeded in the corner and Edward crossed the room to switch it off before he made the announcement that would make them all look up with their mouths open. He had formed the sentence in his mind.

“I say, everybody. I’ve got a bit of news for you. I’ve got a better——” Connie looked up, the lines from her nose to the corners of her mouth deepening. “Ted, those clothes simply stink of machine oil. It’s horrible in a room where people have got to eat.”

“Well, my son,” boomed her father, “how’s the factory?”

Edward snapped on the wireless again. “Oh,” he said, “mustn’t grumble.”

He ate his tea in the kitchen. There were some potatoes in the
Lipmanns’ sack and he put them on to boil while he ate. “Ted,” called Connie, as if she knew he were just pouring milk into his cup, wondered whether p along“don’t use too much milk. Mother wasn’t able to bring any today.”

Oh, she wasn’t. What had she brought? Ted took a look into the leather shopping bag on the dresser. Two tins of salmon—funny things some people spent their points on—a beetroot, cheese in a cold sweat, sugar, a swiss roll. Mrs. Munroe’s alkaline powder, and some of Pop’s tomatoes. Edward didn’t see why he shouldn’t have a couple.

He felt quite continental as he broke up the crusty loaf, and holding the sausage in his left hand, sliced pieces onto the bread, which he put into his mouth with the hand that held the knife. That was the way the workmen used to eat in that place in Belgium, Wenduyne, where he and Connie had gone two Augusts running. He could smell now the dry electric smell of the trams that whined by the café where he used to have his Bock and Connie her
gateaux.
She had had a pink dress the first year they went and a big hat with a dip in front. That was when she still had ins and outs. She was not fat now, but somehow the curves and hollows had levelled themselves out.

As he ate, his, eyes devoured the paper propped against the teapot. It had been in his pocket all day, folded very small, so that he could snatch a few square inches of it whenever he got the chance. In the canteen, he had taken his plate over to a far table where there were two men he didn’t know, but just as he was settling down to a good read, Mike had come along and spent the whole lunch-hour discussing the possibilities of supercharging his motor-cycle. Then again at tea-time, when he took his mug behind a cleaning tank, he had been hunted down for an argument about Mod. 317 by the foreman, who had already had his tea in peace in his office.

There was a lot to be said for Thursdays. Even if it did bring his family-in-law, it also brought
Backyard Breeding, The Weekly Journal for Fanciers.
Whether your fancy were rabbits, cats, chickens, guinea pigs or chocolate-coloured mice,
Backyard Breeding
was your bible, and probably your chief medium for buying and selling. The four middle pages were devoted to rabbits and a section of this to Edward’s own breed, the Flemish Giant. “Flemish Footnotes” was compiled by a genius called “Giganta”, better-known to the Fancy as Allan Colley, the well-known judge, who knew every known thing about Flemishes, and a few things that no one else knew. Edward thought that if he could ever meet Allan Colley his life would be fulfilled.

He was so absorbed in “Let Selective Breeding be Your Motto”, that his mouth was often open for seconds at a time with the bread and sausage poised in front of it. Then he read the Show Reports and Club News ; he and Dick Bennett from the Final Assembly Shop thought of starting a Domestic Club in Collis Park. Finishing the pickled cucumber by itself, he had an idea. He would put a notice up about it in the Lipmanns’ glass case,

The cucumber was very salty and he got up to fill the teapot with hot water. The potatoes would be done by the time he’d had his second cup. He had already looked at the Readers’ Letters : “The Fancy’s Forum”, in case they had put in his note about Snuffles. One day they might print something of his. He would write another letter next week about damp-proof hutches. That advertisement was still in, for the dark steel doe he wanted : “In kindle, square as a brick. Inspection a a pleasure to Flemishites, No obligation.” Shocking pries they wanted, but now that he had got this new job, perhaps he might.

He lit a cigarette and put his tea things in the sink, then taking the Lipmanns’ sack tomorrow night.”wdr and the potatoes in a bowl, he went out into the cooling evening.

Most people who lived in Church Avenue grew vegetables in the rectangle of back garden that ran down to “the Ponds”, the flooded gravel pits where children played in daily peril of drowning. But in the Ledwards’ back garden there was no room for vegetables. All round the fence stood an uneven collection of dwellings, hardly any of which had started life as hutches. Edward had made them out of packing cases and odd bits of wood and wire netting. Queenie rested tired but confident in one of the hencoops given to Edward by the Time Clerk at the factory when all his chickens had died of Coccidiosis and he had neither the heart nor the capital to start again. On the trodden earth in the
middle
of the garden, two families of adolescents crowded and bounced in low wire netting runs. Edward was going to sell the eldest family next week. He had had a very good offer through
Backyard Breeding.
Now that the rabbits were beginning to pay, Connie didn’t talk so much about the price of vegetables in the shops, nor about “that ignorant Dick Bennett” who had originally roused Edward’s enthusiasm and had given him his first doe.

Humming tunelessly, Edward went down the hutches. When they saw him coming, all the rabbits except Queenie stood on their hind legs with their soft pale bellies against the wire. The adolescent families kicked and plunged and piled themselves up at the end of the runs. Edward felt like a God; his sack was Cornucopia. Putting the potatoes down to cool, he went from hutch to hutch, squatting down for a word with each rabbit as he pushed the cabbage through the wire. When he was a boy, he had read a book about a man who discovered how to speak the language of animals, and for years it was his dream that this would happen to him. He would growl at strange dogs and make snuffling and whinnying noises at horses in the street when no one was looking, in the hope of hitting on the secret. Half ashamed of his childishness, he still toyed occasionally with the fancy. He twitched his high-boned prominent nose at a large buck rabbit who twitched back at him, chewing sideways and staring out of hazel eyes. Sometimes in the evening when he was feeling particularly happy, Edward might have gone down on all fours to kick and whiffle and pretend be
was a rabbit, but for the fear that Connie would look out of the window and think he had gone mad.

“Wonder if she has her fancies,” he said to the buck. “When she’s alone, does she pretend to be somebody else? I wonder if everybody does. Perhaps we should all think we were mad if we could see each other when we were alone. But then of course, we shouldn’t be alone, should we?” He laughed and went on down the hutches. He had a long session with Queenie. Incredible to think of what was going on inside her.

He lifted the roof of the hutch and put in his hand to see if he could feel anything. “Quickening” he believed the expression was. He had once heard Dorothy and Mrs. Munroe and Connie talking about it in hissing whispers upstairs. Queenie immediately pressed herself into a corner of the cage.

“All right, my dear,” said Edward, shutting up the hutch, “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Couche-toi, couche-toi.” He often spoke bits of French to the rabbits, as they were Belgian. Connie had caught him once saying “Comment ça va?” to an ailing buck. Well, perhaps he was mad. He’d be talking to himself next like the old girl who zig-zagged down Church Avenue in a thick black veil and a purple cloak.

He gave all the rabbits a spoonful of potato. Yes, he would definitely get that doe in kindle. Have to think announcementI s. about getting some new hutches too. He was only in a small way now, but one day he was going to do big things. He might even become well known, like Allan Colley. It was almost dark by the time he was at the last hutch. Why should the little grey doe in there make him think suddenly of the factory and his new job tomorrow? He peered in at her, dealing delicately with her potato. How odd ; she reminded him of the little fair girl he had noticed when the foreman was pointing out the bench he would be in charge of tomorrow. He hadn’t noticed much about the girls, perching in their grey overalls round the tableful of metal, except that there seemed a terrifying lot of them. Time enough to take stock of them tomorrow, when he had to meet them. He had deliberately been trying not to think about tomorrow in case he should start thinking up unnatural, jocular remarks. Dinah would be nice to him, though ; he knew her. He had seen her this afternoon looking tousled, and he had seen this other girl. It was tea-time and she was taking little nibbles out of an enormous bun, just like the little grey doe was doing with the potato.

The kitchen doorway suddenly flung an oblong of light on to the garden. “Edward!” called Connie. “It’s black-out time. Are you coming in to do it? I’ve half killed myself trying to get the shutter up in here.”

“You shouldn’t try, dear,” said Edward, going indoors, “You know I always do it.”

“The doctor’s dared me to lift weights,” said Connie, while Edward fitted the wooden shutter into the glass of the door, still happy from his rabbits.

Connie had her back to him, bending over the sink to fill the kettle. She was wearing a blue skirt and a belted tunic blouse that made her waist look quite small. Edward was suddenly moved to put his arms round her from behind and squeeze her. He turned her round and kissed her, while she held the kettle awkwardly between them.

“Ted, for Heaven’s sake—you’re getting me all wet. What’s the matter with you? Let me go, I want to turn the tap off. Oh
don
’
t
, Ted, you’re horrible.”

“Connie,” began Edward, and she saw what was coming and slid her eyes away. “Now Ted, you know what the doctor said after my illness.”

“But Connie, that was months ago. It must be all right now.”

“D’you want to make me ill again?”

“Why don’t you go to the doctor again and find out if it’s all right?”

“I’ve been,” she said after a pause, turning away. He knew she was lying but he didn’t challenge her. No use laying yourself open to any more humiliation. Just as well Connie had had that illness really. She had felt like this about him before that, but now they could keep the pretence of the doctor between them, for decency’s sake.

Connie patted her hair. “I’m going to put the kettle on. We’re going to have one more game before the News. You going to play?”

“Might as well,” said Edward. “I’ll go and change.”

The living-room looked pleasant with the curtains drawn and the centre light on. It was three lamps hanging from a circular wooden bracket, which in the days when lorries had gone down Church Avenue, used sometimes to revolve slowly, making the shadows travel. Pretty the way it shone on Dorothy’s fair hair. She did it drawn up at the sides into curls on top, and low at the back definitely blyh in a silky fold. Connie’s hair had only just been permed and was set in tight little curls under an invisible hairnet. Smart, but it made her face look too big, because she had had it cut, to give the perm longer to grow out. Edward preferred it when it was growing out and she could brush it at night without fear of losing the set.

Mrs. Munroe’s hair under the light reminded Edward of the blue-black oil that covered the engines at Kyle’s before they were cleaned. It was drawn down from the middle into two immense coils over each ear, studded insecurely with hairpins, with a few wisps escaping horizontally from the centre.

Mr. Munroe hadn’t got any hair ; his head was like a billiard ball in the light—Spot, because there was a mole on it. No, he had got one hair ; it grew out of the mole. Len’s hair was dark red and followed backward the sloping line of his forehead.

Edward passed a hand over his own head. Funny soft stuff. It wasn’t really thinning; it was just very fine hair. Connie had once said in a moment of vision that it was like the pile on her camel hair coat.

“Your turn to play, Ted,” she said, spreading her cards into a fan and shutting them up secretively. “For Heaven’s sake, I never knew anybody take so long to decide, did you, Pop?”

“When I used to play at the Conservative Club,” began her father laying down his cards and preparing to tell a story, “there was a chap by the name of Bayliss, who——”

“He’s a dark horse is our Ted,” said Don, through a waggling cigarette, “these slow starters always get your money in the end.”

“This chap Bayliss, I remember, always used to count twenty-five before he played a card. I wasn’t a bad player in those days ; used to go up there nearly every night, as your mother will tell you. Whist mostly—that was my game. I remember I asked this chap——”

“Oh shut
up
, Pop,” said Dorothy, “I can’t hear myself think.” She played a card, took it back again, fidgeted and played another. Her father leaned across the table to Edward. “So I asked him : ‘Are you aware,’ I said, ‘that out of every game, you waste, on an average, four minutes and ten seconds?’—I’d done a quick calculation in my head. ‘Multiply that by—’ ”